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Interpretive Resource

Turning the Pages: Charles White Sketchbook, 1937-42

This bold and colorful sketchbook was made by Charles Wilbert White (1918-1979), an African American painter and printmaker. In fact, he started it while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A Works Progress Administration artist during the Great Depression, White later became a professor of fine arts at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he taught Kerry James Marshall, among other artists. The sketchbook includes numerous figures drawn from life of African American models, and some from African sculpture. He even portrayed the poet Langston Hughes as he gave a lecture on April 1, 1938 at the Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library. White's notes also appear on the theory of teaching art, with a list of some of his preferred watercolor pigments and oil glazes, some of which have been applied throughout this book.